Baby at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta gets tiny pacemaker device, saving his life

ATLANTA — Baby Connor was born early with a complete heart block.

His mother, Amanda Brinker, said doctors tried medicine to keep his heart beating.

“We lived week to week on whether or not he was going to make it, and that was incredibly stressful,” Brinker told Channel 2′s Linda Stouffer.

Whitehill and the cardiac team at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta decided there were too many risks with typical surgeries.

“Unfortunately for Connor, we could not delay very long,” Dr. Robert Whitehill of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta said.

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They wanted to try something so new that they needed federal approval.

“The best thing was to try and use the pediatric IPG by Medtronic and try and get emergency authorization,” Whitehill said.

The device Whitehill referenced is a smaller pacemaker device, so thin it’s the width of the doctor’s ring.

The hospital was able to get emergency authorization for this device within the week and was able to get it implanted quickly, so Connor was able to get out of the ICU within 48 hours.

“Up until he, you know, came out of that pacemaker surgery, there was always a chance to, you know, his heart would just not be able to keep up,” Brinker said. “Now he’s just a normal baby.”

Now, three-month-old Connor is smiling, snuggling and surprising his parents...

That small device, one of the first in the world, is having a huge impact.

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That new pacemaker sends constant feedback to Connor’s doctors for these critical first couple of years. Then they’ll implant a larger device.

Doctors say Connor can play sports and live an active life.

The device is working so well ‘children’s’ just got approval to use another one to help an additional baby.

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